allegheny chinkapin for nuts

Hello everybody, this is my first post on this forum so here it goes. I'm thinking of planting a food forest/orchard and i want to plant something to provide calories sustainably. I don't have alot of land (about 2 acres) so I need somthing that is compact. recently I have been researching the allegheny chinkapin, its small compact and produces edible nuts. it's related to the american chestnut and is reported to be blight resistant. problem is i cant find any information on growing this tree for nut production. I wondering if anybody on this board can give me any input on this tree.

I would do hazelnut instead, they are only 11ft, bears in 2 years and give about 20lbs per tree. where as the same size chinkapin chestnut gives alot less, they are the same size and they hurt to harvest. Now if you already have almond/hazelnut/yellownut/apricot nut/chilean nut go ahead and get the chinkapin too.

Db hatfield

Posts: 2

posted 5 years ago

thank you for the inpupt. I would love to plant some American Hazelnuts on my property but i already have a walnut and some kind of hickory. and my main focus right now is on a calorie producer, maybe chinese chestnuts instead.

Hazelnut produce the most calorie per space, 300sq ft will have 1 walnut(100lbs) or 6 hazelnut (120lbs). Hazelnut is shade tolerant so you can grow plants above it and a few currants/gooseberry/strawberry under it. However if by calorie you mean carbs vs protein and fat, then chestnut is the way to go esp if you are going to use it to make flour. Uhmm, you could plant the chestnut (25ft) with the hazelnut (12f) under it. there is more than enough space and sunlight for both because they overlap.

From what I've read, American Hazelnuts do not have yields of 20 pounds per plant. At least not as an average. Maybe you are talking about the european hazelnut cultivars, but they are prone to filbert-blight. Mark Shephard speaks quite a bit about all of this in his new book.

" I'm going to stay out of this discussion, but.... The hazelnut nurseries from west of the Rockies do not have cultivars that will survive east of the rockies.... Of the two weblinks that were listed one produces the poorest quality nursery stock that has ever been grown, (but the genetics are GOOD!) and the other has nursery stock that survives but whos genetics have yet to prove themselves in any 3-rd party research plots... Forest Agriculture Enterprises LLC www.forestag.com has nursery stock that is currently in variety trials in MN, WI, MI, IA, IL, and NY. It's the only nursery east of the rockies that has a controlled-cross breeding program, and also happens to be the nursery that is totally sold out 1 year in advance already...